


warm arms

by Ceta



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Okaeri: YOI Home Zine, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 19:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceta/pseuds/Ceta
Summary: In the time before Yuuri’s arrival to Saint Petersburg, Victor thinks about how Yuuri can change his apartment into a home — only to realize that he’s already found his home in Yuuri himself.





	warm arms

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to everyone who supported the zine!

 

Victor remembers when he first moved into his apartment, remembers when he signed the lease with his messiest signature to date because of the trembling excitement. His things were already there, the apartment itself already artfully furnished, and all that was left to do was add Makkachin and Victor himself between those walls, and the apartment would be home. A place where Victor didn't have to keep up his infallible air, where he didn't have to be the senior division's rising champion. A place where he could just be Victor. 

 

How naive he’d been. 

 

Just Victor didn't smile much. Makkachin managed to bring an occasional smile when the quiet stirred her into doing  _ something  _ to drive it out and away. She walked around the house, nails clicking against the hardwood floor; grabbed a toy and looked at Victor with those pleading puppy eyes until he played with her; jumped onto Victor when he was sprawled across the couch and licked his face until laughter spilled from his lips, filled the grey apartment with gold instead. 

 

When the novelty of having his own space vanished, swift rather than gradual, all that was left was an aching loneliness. The apartment was big - Victor had made sure it was; he’d had a need for his own place, wanted it big and spacious so that he could fill the empty spaces and find comfort in that, in a place he could call his - but it felt bare because despite all of Victor's daydreams and expectations, Victor  _ wasn't  _ \- isn't, still, he knows now - enough to fill the empty spaces, save for the drawer of medals he tucked away in the corner of his closet. 

 

That corner was for Victor legend-in-the-making Nikiforov. Victor had wanted it that way. He didn't want skating to fill this space he wanted for all the other things that made up Victor. Skating was work, was joy and fun trickling down the drain, and Victor wanted this place with its big windows and fluffy comforters to be somewhere he could go to when everything else was too much.

 

Victor only wanted a home. 

 

It wouldn't be until years later that he'd have one in Katsuki Yuuri's arms.

  
  


*

  
  


Victor spends the weeks after the GPF being put through his paces, getting yelled at by Yakov, teasing Yuri whenever he has the energy for it, and, finally, making his grand comeback onto the ice. 

 

“You were beautiful,” Yuuri gushes, in one of his rare bouts honesty. If Victor knew just how bright-eyed and sincere his skating made Yuuri, he probably would have been quicker in choosing to go back to skating. 

 

(A lie. What a lie. There wouldn’t have even been a choice, despite all the reasons he left it in the first place.)

 

“Amazing,” Yuuri says with a smile. The focus shifts from Yuuri to a wall as he goes about his day, half a world away where Victor can’t reach out and find him there beside him. It won’t be long before Yuuri is out on the ice, coachless save for Minako who offered to look after him in Victor’s stead, but still Victor itches to be beside him. Yuuri’s skating is breathtaking through a screen, a miracle come to life when Victor is watching him in person. “You were amazing, Victor -  _ are _ , still.”

 

Victor soaks this in, tucks it into the dark corners of his heart that are starved for this, for Yuuri’s attention and praise, and smiles back because Victor needs to send Yuuri off with a smile. They don’t know if Yuuri will have time before he’s on the ice for another call, and Victor will have to make do with the time they have now. 

 

“I can’t wait to watch you, Yuuri,” he says, achingly honest as every time before. “You’ll do great.”

 

Ever aware of Yuuri, Victor learned early on that praise - as long as it isn’t undeserved, though Victor will argue that Yuuri deserved all the praise Victor ever gave him - is easily the best way to lift Yuuri’s spirits. His eyes light up in parts determination and joy, his lips curl up into a pleased little smile, and his cheeks color just the faintest shade of pink. Though Victor can’t see it or feel it, he knows that the tension drawn across Yuuri’s shoulders is relaxing, dissipating bit by bit.

 

The look in his eyes morphs into a smolder, his smile into a smirk, and Victor’s weak, weak heart jumps at that. He’s so beautiful like this, unfairly handsome, breathtakingly gorgeous -

 

“Don’t ever take your eyes off of me,” Yuuri says - all but orders, like Victor will ever want to look away. Victor knows he’s incapable of that, doesn’t even dream of it, but Yuuri is still adamant on securing attention he’s long since had. “I’ll be one with Eros, this time.”

 

Victor nearly chokes on air, masks it as a bright, bewildered laugh. “What - “

 

“Oh, Minako-sensei is calling me,” Yuuri interrupts. He turns his head away at just the right angle so that the light glares across the lenses of his glasses, and the line of his mouth is suspiciously nonchalant. “I have to go now, Victor. I’ll call you after my skate.”

 

“Wait, Yuuri - “

 

The call is cut. Victor is left staring at his phone with the strangest coil of arousal in his gut. He ignores it, flops down dramatically on the hotel bed, and stares at the ceiling.

 

God, he misses Yuuri. He’s probably blushing again after that comment, looking that endearing mix of confident and embarrassed. Victor can imagine it so clearly when he shuts his eyes that it’s frustrating to open them only to find himself alone in his hotel room.

 

A few more days, he reminds himself. Only a few more days until he’ll be by Yuuri again, until he can wrap him in his arms and hold him. He can wait that long. He’s been waiting twenty-seven years for Yuuri; a handful of days will be nothing he can’t handle - in theory, at least. He thought the same thing when he left Yuuri at Barcelona to go straight to Saint Petersburg (“It’s only a few weeks,” he said as he was leaving, and even then he didn’t know who he was reassuring, “It’ll be fine.”) and these past weeks have been enough to see how Yuuri’s absence is taking its toll on him. 

 

It’s in the small things: his empty apartment, eating dinner alone, walking back from the rink well into the evening with no one beside him. Victor didn’t let it get to him before, but he didn’t know better then. He didn’t know Yuuri’s warmth or the Katsukis’ care, didn’t know how starved he was for it until the smallest gesture from them had his heart hurting.

 

It should be terrifying, how much he craves that companionship, but he loves it, loves Yuuri even more, and there’s nothing scary about that, not when that same love is reflected back at him in Yuuri’s eyes.

  
  


*

  
  


Yuuri’s flight is delayed at its stop. Victor curses climate change, the air pressure, the wind velocities, seasonal monsoons, the shifting tectonic plates — 

 

“I don’t think the last one counts,” Yuuri tells him, a sleepy, amused smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He’s in the waiting area where large windows are visible from behind him, and occasionally Victor can hear faint announcements about other flights echo overhead.

 

It’s been eight hours. Only a few more, now, until Yuuri is with him. Victor is counting down the seconds, the minutes, feeling each one where Yuuri isn’t getting closer to him tear at his patience. This listlessness was planted in his chest well in the morning, showed itself in his skating to the point that Yakov told him to go home, but now with nothing to distract him Victor is struggling to keep it leashed.

 

He shuts his eyes, breathes out, tries to pull together that composure he’s known for, and wonders where it went in the face of Yuuri’s half-lidded gaze. “I can’t wait to see you again,” he tells Yuuri, wants him to know how much Victor misses him. “It’s different without you here.”

 

“It’s because you’re back home,” Yuuri says after a moment. There’s a strange quality to his words, something Victor doesn’t know enough to place, but Yuuri is still smiling, still looking at Victor like he’s the reason for it, and so Victor doesn’t think more of it. “It’s almost been a year since you’ve been back.”

 

_ I’ve never thought of this place as home _ , Victor wants to tell him, but that’s a lie. He did, once, had wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Too big, too empty. A place to stay but never home, not like the small inn in Hasetsu was when he was there.

 

He’s bringing Yuuri into that space. Victor wonders what Yuuri will make of it, if he’ll like it or think it too cold like Victor sometimes does on those dark days. He wonders if Yuuri, who’s never completely at ease in hotel rooms, will be able to find some smidgen of comfort in the blues and greys of Victor’s apartment.

 

Mostly, though, Victor wonders if Yuuri can change it, if he can fill the corners Victor has never been able to reach on his own. It makes him giddy, thinking about it, the mix of them making the apartment  _ theirs _ , and Victor smiles at Yuuri, who’s off-center with only part of his face visible on the screen, nodding off.

 

“Maybe it will be, if you’re there,” Victor murmurs, but Yuuri doesn’t hear it, half-asleep as he is now. That’s fine. Yuuri will find out once he gets here anyway. He’ll learn about the kind of life Victor lived before they met, and how Victor is the one who needs Yuuri more than Yuuri will ever need him. 

 

It’s inevitable, unavoidable. Victor doesn’t care.

 

“Yuuri,” he calls, trying to keep Yuuri awake. “Stay awake for me, love. You don't want to miss your flight.”

 

“‘m a light sleeper. I'll wake up,” Yuuri lies, eyes still closed. Softer, sincere in so many ways he never allows himself to be when he's more awake, he adds in a sleepy mumble: “Want to see you.”

 

And Victor, he looks at the small pieces of Yuuri that he can see - his chin, a pink-dusted cheek, the corner of one eye, the ends of his hair, a corner of his smiling lips - and he doesn’t know what to say in the face of Yuuri’s honesty,  _ can’t  _ say anything because Victor’s heart can’t take it. It’s beating so fast in his chest trying to keep up with Yuuri, with his words and his smiles and his everything, and Yuuri just sleepily tells him,  _ Want to see you,  _ like it’s nothing. Like making Victor’s renowned, ice-cold heart beat like it’s finally alive after nearly a decade of stagnation is something  _ easy _ .

 

Gods, Victor loves him so, so much.

 

“I want to see you, too,” Victor tells him, and if he sounds a little choked up, a little out of breath, it’s fine because it’ll be because of Yuuri. He clutches his phone tight between both his hands, stares at what little he can see of Yuuri now and thinks about how there’s only a few more hours until he can see the entirety of Yuuri then. It does nothing to soothe the overwhelming need to have Yuuri here that swells up in his chest and makes his heart constrict and his breath catch in his throat, but it helps. “I miss you.”

 

“I miss you more,” Yuuri murmurs. The angle shifts so that it’s centered on Yuuri’s face again, and Victor just now notices the exhausted edge to his eyes. Yuuri doesn’t look like he’s slept at all, and Victor’s silence is attributed to the fact that he can’t decide whether he wants to chastise him for not taking care of himself, or if he should worry over him despite Yuuri being a fully grown, very capable man. “It was… different, too, without you there. Quiet.”

 

The way Yuuri says it -  _ quiet  _ \- like it’s something terrible and sad, like  _ lonely  _ or  _ lost  _ or  _ empty _ , makes Victor want to reach out and draw him into his arms. He owes so much to Yuuri - life and love and a whole new world of color where the ashes of Victor’s old one lay at his feet - and he wants to do whatever he can to repay him: coach him, skate for him, love him until Victor’s heart doesn’t have anything else to give, until it becomes Yuuri’s to hold and care for. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Victor says, because he was the one who left Yuuri in the end, no matter how much Yuuri pushed him to. “I should have at least gone with you back to Hasetsu.”

 

“You needed all the time you could get to prepare for nationals,” Yuuri says, and he sounds a little more awake this time. “Don’t apologize, Victor. I… I wanted you to go, and it wasn’t so bad, really. Minako-sensei was  _ terrible _ , but it was worth it.”

 

Victor smiles. “Do you like my skating that much?”

 

Yuuri sends him a half-hearted glare before looking away, pink in the face. “I like  _ you _ .”

 

A delighted gasp escapes Victor’s lips, his entire soul lifting. “Yuuri!”

 

“You already knew that, though,” Yuuri says, trying for unaffected, but Victor can hear the slight tremble of embarrassment in his voice. 

 

“It never hurts to hear it,” Victor says, though it’s a bit of a lie. It  _ does  _ hurt, especially when Yuuri is all the way over there and not here where Victor can smother him with affection, but it’s a good hurt, one born from overwhelming joy than pain. He smiles, a small thing but still sincere. “I like you, too.”

 

Yuuri makes a noise like he’s dying, some cross between a groan and a whine, and before Victor can even marvel at how red he’s gotten, Yuuri switches to the back-facing camera so that all Victor can see are his sneakers.

 

“Yuuri!” Victor whines.

 

“Yuuri isn’t available at the moment,” Yuuri says, and though his tone is as deadpan as can be, Victor can hear the slight strain around the edges of his voice, a smile lilting the ends of it. “You’ll have to call back later.”

 

“Later is too long,” Victor retorts. “I want to see the love of my life now.”

 

“Victor!” Yuuri groans, and Victor can just imagine it, the way Yuuri buries his red face into his hands even though Victor isn’t there to see it. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

 

“I am,” Victor agrees, shameless. Yuuri lets out a muffled laugh, and Victor smiles. “Can I see you now?”

 

“No,” Yuuri tells him, “but you can see me in a few hours when I get off my plane.”

 

“ _ Yuuri _ .”

 

“I’ll have a surprise for you,” Yuuri says, probably to appease him. 

 

“A gold medal?” Victor asks, then realizing that that isn’t much of a surprise, he says instead: “You?”

 

There’s definitely a smile in Yuuri’s voice when he says, “Something better.”

 

Victor highly doubts that there’s anything better than Yuuri, but he doesn’t voice it. Instead, because Victor can play fire with fire, he switches to the back-facing camera too and gives Yuuri a good view of his polished loafers instead of his handsome face, and Yuuri’s attempts to poke fun at him (“Aren’t you uncomfortable dressed like that?” To which Victor replies, “I have to look my best for you.”) backfire spectacularly when Victor can  _ hear  _ the blush on his face only for it to backfire on  _ him  _ when Yuuri starts being unbearably honest again (“You always look amazing, no matter what you wear.”).

 

(When Yuuri arrives nearly nine hours later, Victor is waiting for him by the gate. They waste no time at all wrapping around each other, and they stand like that for a long, quiet moment until Victor says into Yuuri’s ear: “What’s my surprise?”

 

Yuuri pulls back just a little bit, smiles serenely up at him, and presses their lips together for a brief second before he murmurs, soft and sleepy, “I’m home.”

 

Something giddy and bright overwhelms him, and Victor wraps his arms tighter around Yuuri, buries his face into his shoulder and tries to hold back the trembling joy blooming in his chest. In an unfamiliar airport, surrounded by an unfamiliar language, settling in a foreign country, Yuuri has never been farther away from home. Despite it all, Yuuri stands warm and soft in his arms, tucked against Victor like he loves it there, here, and Victor - Victor has never once been anyone’s home, has never thought he could be before Yuuri, but — 

 

“Welcome home,” he whispers and loves the way it tastes on his lips.)

 

*

 

It’s strange waking up to Yuuri’s drool on his shoulder. Funnily enough, it’s not the first time it has ever happened - the trip to Barcelona comes to mind, when both he and Yuuri fell asleep on the plane ride there, and Victor woke up every so often to Yuuri progressively leaning towards him until his head ended up against Victor’s shoulder near the end of it - so Victor is about as put off by it as he is by the arm Yuuri has thrown over his waist: that is, not at all.

 

(But isn’t that a wonder, Yuuri’s arm around his waist, his leg tucked between Victor’s, all but possessively curled around him like Victor is _his_ to hold - and drool on, of course.

 

Victor has never been drooled on before Yuuri. He also hasn’t been dipped before Yuuri, either. They both have a special place in Victor’s happy heart.)

 

“Yuuri,” he murmurs, voice a bit rough with the few hours of sleep -  _ four _ , his bedside clock helpfully tells him after a quick glance, and even that is too little sleep for Victor. “You’re drooling on me.”

 

“Mmph,” Yuuri grunts helpfully, but after a moment of restless movement, Victor feels Yuuri messily swiping away the drool with his shirt before resuming his place with his face tucked up against Victor’s neck. “M’sorry.”

 

“Love you,” Victor mumbles, nuzzling Yuuri’s hair.

 

“Love you,” Yuuri tries to parrot back, but in his sleep-hazed state it comes out more or less like  _ Uhhv-oo _ .

 

Victor falls back asleep with a smile.

 

*

 

Yuuri has a terrible case of jetlag. He stumbles out of the bedroom with a toothbrush in his mouth just after noon, no toothpaste, asking where the bathroom is even though Victor left the door wide open so that Yuuri can make it out even without his glasses; he doesn’t bother to comb his hair after he finishes, letting it stick up at odd angles that has Victor’s fingers itching to straighten them out; and at the end of it all, he slinks up behind Victor while he’s trying to decide what he should make for their late breakfast, wraps his arms around him, and presses his face between Victor’s bare shoulder blades with a content hum.

 

“Hi,” is all Yuuri can manage to say after roughly half an hour of getting ready.

 

“Wow,” Victor says, marveling at the fact that yes, those are Yuuri’s arms around his waist, and yes, that’s Yuuri’s hair tickling the back of his neck, and yes, that’s Yuuri pressed up behind him, all warm and strong and - “Wow,” he breathes again.

 

“Food?” Yuuri mumbles into his back, and Victor tries to quell the rapid beat of his heart.

 

“Yes,” he says, smiling. “What would you like?”

 

“Everything.”

 

Victor nudges Yuuri in mock-chastisement - because even though Victor’s arranged them both a rest day today, that doesn’t suddenly mean that they can break their meal plan so spectacularly - and says, “Pancakes it is.”

 

Yuuri just burrows closer to his back and asks, breath warm even through his shirt, “Need help?”

 

Victor doesn’t. He has lived over a decade on his own, cooking his own meals and setting his own schedule, that housework comes naturally to him. Even so: “Can you… make the eggs?”

 

“Sunny-side?” Before Victor can reply, Yuuri makes a noise and corrects, “Ah - You like it scrambled, right?”

 

Victor doesn’t know how Yuuri knows, but it tickles Victor’s heart to know that Yuuri remembers. “Either way is fine.”

 

“Scrambled,” Yuuri decides, then pulls away after brushing the faintest kiss to Victor’s bare skin. It sends pleasant warmth down Victor’s spine, makes him high with affection. The sunlight streaming through the windows turns almost unbearably bright, the grey-blue walls of his apartment become bolder. 

 

One small kiss, and his world is saturated with life.

 

“Victor?”

 

Victor snaps out of his reverie, eyes finding Yuuri by the fridge where he’s holding three eggs in one hand. Looking at him now, with his bed hair and the wrinkled set of shirt-and-sweats he managed to pull on right before he collapsed into bed, with his sleep-relaxed posture and his slightly crooked glasses, with Yuuri looking like he has always belonged here in Victor’s too-cold apartment that suddenly feels  _ warm  _ — Victor wonders if Yuuri is doing it already, turning the space between these walls into the comfort of home.

 

“... Yes?” he manages to say when he realizes that his silence has gone for too long. Yuuri doesn’t seem to mind, just sends him a sleepy smile and makes a vague motion to the cabinets with his free hand.

 

“Your pans?” he asks, gesturing again.

 

“They’re over here,” Victor says, pulling out a frying pan and a skillet for himself. “The oil is over in the cabinet by the fridge. Can you grab the butter for me?”

 

Yuuri mumbles an affirmative, grabbing the butter before getting the pepper mill along with the oil from the cabinet. He hands the butter over to Victor, then asks, “Bowls?”

 

Victor flicks the stove on as he leans down to press his lips to Yuuri's temple. “Cabinet on the far right.”

 

Yuuri smiles again, warmer, and goes off for the bowl. Once he has it, he cracks the eggs into that, adds some pepper after some difficulty with the mill, then moves over to the two containers of sugar and salt and stops.

 

“Victor?”

 

“Salt’s on the right,  _ solnyshko _ ,” Victor says without turning back, sliding a sizzling spoonful of butter around the pan. “Do you need anything else?”

 

“No, I don’t think — oh.”

 

Victor glances over his shoulder at the disappointed lilt in Yuuri’s voice. He’s staring, looking a bit lost, into the drawer where Victor keeps the utensils. 

 

Yuuri looks over at him, a bit embarrassed. “You don’t have any chopsticks, do you?”

 

Victor blinks, then remembers Hasetsu where Hiroko sometimes beat the eggs with chopsticks in the early mornings when she made breakfast, where she used a pair twice the size of a regular one to stir-fry rice along with a wooden cooking spoon in the other hand, where, with expert skill, she used chopsticks to even fry pork cutlets. 

 

“Oh,” Victor says, then feels like an idiot.

 

“It’s fine,” Yuuri assures him. He laughs a bit, like this clash of culture is funny - and maybe it would be, if Victor isn’t so embarrassed for forgetting something so important. He prepared for Yuuri’s arrival for the few weeks he was here, going so far as to clean the guest room on the other side of the apartment in case Yuuri didn’t want to sleep with him, and the one thing he happened to forget is chopsticks. 

 

“I’ll get some as soon as I can,” Victor says.

 

Yuuri only laughs more though, and he sounds much more awake than he was a few minutes ago. “It’s fine, Victor, I promise. I spent a few years in Detroit. It’s not like I eat everything with chopsticks.” He pauses, grins. “I have to admit that cooking is a bit harder without them though, especially for things that I’m used to using chopsticks for.”

 

“Yuu _ri_ .”

 

“It’s fine,” Yuuri says for the third time. He comes over to Victor where he’s frowning thoughtfully and sets the bowl of eggs down by the stove. “Besides, you can show me how you make scrambled eggs now.”

 

After that, breakfast goes smoothly. Yuuri looks almost comically determined as he scrambles the eggs with a fork instead, and beside him, stacking pancakes onto a plate, Victor tries and fails to smother the smile that pulls at his lips. When they’re done and seated, pancakes and eggs and bacon - because Yuuri levelled him with pleading eyes that Victor couldn’t deny - between them, Victor presses a foot against Yuuri’s just as he’s about to take a bite and laughs when Yuuri jolts and yelps.

 

In the middle of it, when Victor is distracted with food and conversation and the way Yuuri looks, Yuuri hooks his foot around Victor’s ankle and keeps it there, a warm weight, though his bare toes are cold when they press against his calf. Yuuri studiously avoids his gaze as he does it, but after a moment he glances up at Victor through his lashes, smiles, and whatever teasing remark Victor was going to say dies in his throat then and there.

 

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Victor says, honest. He feels too full with emotion, and he needs to let it out, needs to let Yuuri know that it’s because of him that Victor can feel at all. “That you’re here, with me.”

 

“I’m glad, too,” Yuuri tells him. The smile on his lips shifts and his eyes go bright, but he reaches out a hand and lays it over Victor’s. The ring glints gold in the light. His cheeks color pink. “It’s a bit embarrassing, and I know I already told you, but I… I really did miss you.”

 

“Yuuri…” 

 

Yuuri tightens his grip on his hand and bulldozes onwards. “So, after we’re done eating, can I just - I know you probably planned things to do once I got here, but can we, well.” He ducks his flushed face into his other hand, peeking up hesitantly at Victor. “Can we… hold each other? Just for a little while?”

 

Victor’s heart is too weak to handle this so early in the morning. Dazed, Victor says, uncomprehending, “You want to cuddle?”

 

If anything, that just makes the pink of Yuuri’s cheeks color deeper. His grip on Victor’s hand is borderline painful, but Victor hardly registers it when he’s as dumbstruck as he is. 

 

“Yes,” Yuuri replies, resolve already wavering before Victor’s eyes. “You were always there in Hasetsu and during competitions. You were always - Every time you were close you’d - you’d adjust my posture, or brush my hair, or… or hug me, and I think I got used to it somehow.” Yuuri’s voice dips to something just above a whisper, eyes lowering to their clasped hands. “I couldn’t relax even when I got back to Yutopia, and the katsudon  _ kaasan  _ made me tasted stale, and all your things were gone from the banquet room, and even though I won gold it didn’t feel like a victory because you weren’t there to hug me afterwards.”

 

Victor stares at Yuuri, heart in his throat, and thinks,  _ I love you so, so much. _

 

“I could hardly sleep because you weren’t there,” Yuuri continues, so soft in his honesty. “All of a sudden, you became such a big part of my life - a  _ bigger  _ part of my life - without me realizing it. When I think about you now, I don’t think about how you’re my idol or how I looked up to you for - for  _ years _ … I think about how happy you’ve made me, and how happy I want to make you, and how, whenever you hug me, it feels like I’ve come home.”

 

“That,” Victor starts, then lets out a wet, breathless laugh. “That sounds like another marriage proposal.”

 

Yuuri blinks, caught off guard, but then he sends Victor the warmest smile. “Is that a yes?”

 

“Yes,” Victor says, immediately and giddily. He stands and tugs Yuuri up with him. “Come on, Yuuri. Let’s go cuddle.”

 

“What about- Victor, our food - “

 

“- can wait,” Victor finishes for him. 

 

Too impatient for the few extra steps to the bedroom, Victor pulls Yuuri over to the couch and lies across it, holding his arms out. Yuuri doesn’t hesitate to fall into them, and after some minor adjustments, they’re comfortably settled against each other across the couch. Victor buries his face into Yuuri’s hair, winds his arms around him, and feels every ounce of tension drain away, leaving him ensconced in Yuuri’s warmth.

 

Like this, Victor wonders if he had it all wrong before. Instead of having Yuuri make his apartment into something it isn’t, maybe all Victor really needs is Yuuri and his smiles and his hand around his to feel at home, to feel safe and welcomed and loved in overwhelming measures. The thought leaves his heart trembling.

 

Victor hugs Yuuri closer, chasing a warmth he’s never felt before meeting him, and murmurs, “I’m home.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> +the full title was actually 'hungry heart, warm arms' but i had another fic named 'hungry heart' so i just cut it down. whoops!  
> +the egg-scrambling was from my own experience. i was at a friend's house and was handed a fork to whisk the eggs. i was so lost and uncomfortable at first, it was kinda embarrassing haha
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
